Around the Campfire
by Delphinbella
Summary: Rebecca and Aubaine get into a fight over Farson and the rules of the Gunslinger's Council. One Shot. Rated for language.


Based on the characters that used to play at the DT RPG: Other Worlds. Rebecca and Lane belong to me, all other characters belong to their respective owners. The Gunslinger's Council is also my idea, you won't find it in the books.

Around the Campfire

"Farson's right."

I don't remember what caused her to say that, what Aubaine had been saying or doing to elicit that response, but her voice was flat and emotionless as she spoke, almost as if she was saying "its dark" rather than saying that the man we were fighting, the man who was trying his damnedest to ruin our way of life, was in the right and we in the wrong.

"Cry pardon?" Aubaine replied, a smile on his face because he could only assume Rebecca was joking.

"Farson's right. The Old Ways are just that: old, outdated, unfair." She spat the last word at him. "Farson is right - we aught to destroy the old ways, begin again, make things fair, make them equal. I agree completely. And if I ever meet him I will tell him so, right before I put a bullet between his eyes."

"That's the most callus thing I've heard you say on this trip, and that's damn good considering all you've said," Shane spoke with a smile. He probably did still think Rebecca was joking, at least a little. "Why kill him if you agree with his plan? Because it's your job?"

Rebecca turned her dark gaze to him, "because he's a coward. Because he wants to be a gunslinger and wasn't willing to work for it. Because all he could do was whine and complain until someone listened, and then someone else. And he convinced them to do all his work. I'd kill him because he's lazy."

"You can't just be a gunslinger, Rebecca," Aubaine spat at her, "no matter how hard you work."

Oh and then I could see the little click in her head. That little click that signaled red. "I did," she replied, and it sounded like ice.

"You had a father who was a gunslinger, the system still worked for you to a degree."

"Aye, and what of it? Its a lot easier to hide class than to hide these," she pointed to her chest. "If he really wanted to, he could have found someone to sponsor him. My father isn't the only sonless gunslinger."

"Sure, he could have just come to Gilead, in stolen clothes and with a lie about being someone-or-other's son, and he could have had all the talent in the world, but that doesn't make it respectable. It doesn't make it right." Aubaine was glaring at her, daring her to say one more time that Farson was right, that he should have been given the chance to be a gunslinger.

"And it doesn't make it anymore wrong than telling him that he can't just because he wasn't born of the right father or mother, wasn't born the right gandamn sex!" She was starting to yell, and Ghengis grabbed her shoulder with one of his big, hairy wolf-paws, but she shoved his hand off and pulled her guns. She held them up, pointing them diagonally at each other. "These are not your birthright Aubaine! You do not get these just because your father was the heir to a whore of the Eld! You get these through work. Hard work. And when they tell you that despite all your hard work, all the lying and cheating and deceiving, that you can't have what you have _proven _should be yours just because you were not born right, then you come to me with your laments and your piggish philosophies."

She moved towards him, got right up into his face, and spoke through her teeth. "I wake up most days with so many lies running through my fucking head that I don't even know what the truth is anymore. I don't know who the fuck I'm supposed to be most days. Am I male or female? Am I a gunslinger or a fucking dancer? Is today the day that I come to the state dinner with my guns latched over my skirt and respond to Rebecca and Robert both? Is today the day they will figure out who the fuck I am and send me west and take these away?" She held the guns up between the two of them. "You have to WORK for these Aubaine. Have you really worked hard enough?"

She paused, breathing heavily and glaring at Aubaine. "Farson's right, but I'm going to kill him for being a lazy bastard, just like you."

She turned with a dancer's grace, something only Rebecca could pull off, and walked out of the circle, out of the light cast by the fire, and into the humid darkness.

They all sat, momentarily stunned, except for me. I had seen this coming since Aubaine had first been told who Robert really was when we left Gilead. He had never thought highly of Robert, and he thought even more poorly of Rebecca.

I got up to follow her, and could feel more than see the Wolf doing the same. Shane must have grabbed him, for he stopped. At least Shane knew that I would do a much better job at calming her down. The damn Wolf might make her heart (what was left of it anyways) beat a little faster, but he had the exact opposite effect than she needed right now. She needed someone who knew her; someone who had been there for all her hard work. Someone who also never had the slightest idea what the truth was, he was so caught up in her world of lies.

So I went and sat down next to her in the dark, wet grass. We didn't touch; we didn't speak. But we sat and shared _khef_ for a while - nothing concrete, just feelings.

Finally she spoke, her voice cracking as if it hadn't been used in years. "I hate you." When I didn't reply, she turned her head to look at me. "I hate you, Lane. I hate you because you didn't have to work. Because you did nothing to receive the guns you wear."

Now, we both knew that wasn't true. I had worked damn hard to get Rebecca her own guns, and in the effort had trained myself to near-death as well. I had to know everything well enough to teach it to her after she broke her collarbone. I had to recite lessons, teach her weapons and tactics, and drill, drill, drill. Always drilling, always beating the shit out of each other. Never holding back.

"I hate me too," she finally said. "I hate what I am and what I am becoming. This all started out as a quest for something so honorable..." she trailed off.

"Do you know who I hate more than both of us though?"

"Stephen," I answered automatically. I was trying to get a smile out of her - Stephen was the odd man out in our ka-tet.

"The Council, Lane. The fucking Gunslinger's Council." She was irritated with me, I could tell, but I didn't mind. She could be irritated with me now. "I hate them because they have the power to change the rules and won't. I hate them for other reasons too."

I looked at her, not sure what she was saying with that last bit. I knew better than anyone else Rebecca's hatred for those men, but she wasn't usually this ambiguous with her hatred.

"And do you know who I hate more than you, but less than me?" She said as she caught my _khef_. "Stephen."

I broke out into a good-natured laugh at that and she joined me, although reserved. I got up and pulled her up by her left hand (I had learned when she broke her collarbone that doing anything to her right side was dangerous) and kept hold of it as we walked back. She didn't seem to mind, didn't even seem to notice in fact, and I smiled as we walked back into the circle of light around the fire, with Ghengis' smoldering orange eyes on our clasped hands. Rebecca was mine for this one night.


End file.
